Editorials

Add Education To Your Calendar

Nov 15, 2017

As a result of owning my own commercial real estate firm since 1991, I have seen what works and doesn’t work in the successful development of a real estate salesperson. The single biggest thing that causes most agents to not “make it” is their inability to create a disciplined approach to time management.

Time management is the key to success for any salesperson. It’s also part of organizational skills that most salespeople do not have as an innate trait. Most personality profile tests will support this understanding. A strong salesperson’s test results will look for strong driven skills and the ability to multitask and press forward, even when it looks like there is no business to secure. Yet, almost all of those tests will show lack of organizational skills. This typically would be found in people who are more analytical in nature.

Calendaring Your Day

I have thought for years about the importance of calendaring all of an agent’s necessary activities each day. Personally, I will calendar current business, new business, “big hour”, personal business, research, and education.

The current business includes all of my deal activity pipeline and things I need to do to push those forward. The new business activity includes business development. The “big hour” is working on deals that have low probability to close, but with high rewards if they do. Personal business is acknowledging that everyone has certain personal actions that need to be accomplished each day.

Each activity requires you to create tasks to complete each day, which I keep in a separate tasks file. When I have to do work on current business, I simply go down my list of tasks associated with each activity. If I don’t complete a task, I move it to the next day to complete.

Continuing to Learn

Research and education are the hardest activities to calendar into your schedule. These are also the hardest actions to perform each day. Although education does not produce immediate results, nor lead to any direct benefits for the foreseeable future– you will increase your likelihood of long-term success.

As a commercial real estate broker, I recently attended the National Association of Realtors national convention. Most commercial brokers are not members of the NAR and most regard NAR as a service provider for residential realtors. However, NAR actually provides very strong tools, classes and networking opportunities that support commercial brokers both locally, nationally, and internationally.

I went to NAR to learn about new tools available to realtors. In the end, I learned new ways to leverage social media, new software tools available to improve how I do business while also lowering my costs, and I participated in classes that gave me inspiration to start implementing tactics with a new focus.

In terms of time management education, research is the most important daily activity you can do– and a daily calendar with scheduled time to educate yourself through listening to podcasts, reading books, mentoring, attending training classes or online webinars will help you grow as a salesperson instead of ultimately failing.

Hans Hansson is President of Starboard Commercial Real Estate. Hans has been an active broker for over 32 years in the San Francisco Bay Area and specializes in office leasing and investments. If you have any questions or comments please email hans@starboardnet.com or call him at (415) 765-6897. You may also check out his website, hanshansson.com.